Dangerous to Touch (9 page)

“Yeah.”

“Damn.”

That pretty much summed it up, so he drank his water in silence. He didn’t know how he’d forged this strange friendship, but it had become a comfortable one, in which he didn’t have to explain himself or even talk, if he didn’t want to. Sometimes he sat on Tony’s couch and watched him play video games while his mind drifted, neither of them saying a word.

“You know what you need?” Tony asked.

“To get laid?” he replied, feeling moody.

“Well, yeah. Always.” Then he frowned. “What happened to that hot little blonde? She dump you?”

Marc didn’t know which one he was talking about, but it didn’t really matter, because his relationships always ended the same way. “A while ago.”

“What’s wrong with you, dude? Don’t you know how to tell a woman what she likes to hear?”

Marc pondered that. “What if you didn’t have to? Wouldn’t you rather find one you could be totally honest with?”

“Being honest is one thing. Doing it with finesse, rather than brutality, is another.”

“Thanks for the advice, Mr. Finesse,” he muttered. “Where’s your woman?”

Tony didn’t have an answer for that, because his notoriously short attention span extended to his dealings with the opposite sex. He stood up and switched off the video game monitor abruptly. Reaching into the cigar box that was always on top of the television, he pulled out a Baggie and some rolling papers. “This is what you need. Maximum Relaxem.”

“No,” Marc said shortly. “I don’t.”

“Sure you do. You’re wound up so tight you’re about to snap.” Tony sat down and started rolling a joint. “This stuff here is purely medicinal. Like taking a pill for anxiety.”

Marc didn’t like being thought of as anxious, or uptight, but compared to Tony everyone was. “You know I can’t. Besides, pot makes me paranoid.”

“Not this kind. It’s one hundred percent guaranteed to cure whatever ails you. Either that, or knock your ass out.” Tapping a silent tune with his bare foot, he licked the paper, securing it in place.

“You do realize you’re soliciting an illegal substance to a cop.”

Tony just laughed. Marc had been looking the other way while Tony sold pot for years. He’d known what Tony did long before he moved in next door to him, so Marc didn’t think it would be fair to bust him now. “This isn’t solicitation. It’s a gift.” He put the joint into a plastic bag to keep it fresh. “Give it to your mom if you don’t want it. Maybe it’ll help her more than that
curandero
you’re always complaining about.”

Marc shoved the bag in his pocket, having no intention of turning his mother on to marijuana. The so-called faith healer she visited once a week had been fleecing her (and Marc, for it was he who supported her) for the better part of a decade. Once, she’d even stopped taking her insulin for a short period of time because that damned witch doctor said he could cure her diabetes with “spiritual cleansing.”

His mother’s mental and physical health was fragile enough; she didn’t need to start doing recreational drugs. “Can dogs get stoned?” he asked suddenly.

“Sure. Whispers ate my stash once,” Tony said. “He got really faded.”

Marc glanced at the dog lying beneath the window, whose tail had started thumping at the sound of his name.

“Want to go to the gym?”

He shrugged his assent, and when Tony left the room to get ready, Marc took out his cell phone to call Gina at the lab. “Did you run Blue for marijuana on the toxicology screen?”

“No. We don’t usually add it on, unless specifically requested.”

“Can you?”

“Sure, if I had another sample. THC stays in the system for quite some time, so urine would work.”

He thanked her and hung up, his heart rate quickening, not because he may have discovered a break in the case, but because he had an excuse to see Sidney again.

T
hursday morning dawned in dismal gray layers, peeling away inch by inch until the sun was revealed like a hazy, shimmering orange fireball. Thunderclouds rumbled in the distance, more bluster than threat, for there was only a twenty percent chance of precipitation.

As he jogged in a steady loop around the beautifully manicured grounds of the San Luis Rey Mission, Marc prayed for rain, and release. The oppressive air surrounded him like a steamy blanket, and his mood was as heavy as the weather.

He hated having time off.

If he had any control over the situation, he might have breathed a little easier. Instead Sidney Morrow had turned his life, and his investigation, upside down.

By the time he got home, the morning newspaper was resting innocuously at the base of his front steps. Sweating up a storm, he sat on the stoop and opened it, cursing when he saw the headline: “Police Department Works With Psychic.”

He should have known Crystal would approach Sidney for the story on her own. She was infamous for her back door dealings; he’d discovered that the day he showed up unannounced at the station and caught her blowing her boss in her dressing room.

It was three years ago, but he remembered the scene, and how he’d felt coming upon it, like it was yesterday.

He could still see himself, standing like a fool in the open doorway, the flowers he’d brought to surprise her slipping from his hand, forgotten. If he’d arrived a moment later, he might never have known. If he’d arrived a moment earlier, Crystal might have been able to jerk away from Carlisle and leap to her feet before Marc walked in on them.

In a cruel twist of fate, he entered the room at the exact moment another man was coming in his girlfriend’s mouth.

Marc didn’t say a word, he just turned and left her doing what she did best.

Shaking away the remnants of that unpleasant recollection, he turned his attention to the newspaper in front of him. The caption below the photograph read: “Lieutenant Marc Cruz carries a fainting Sidney Morrow away from the public rest rooms at Guajome Lake Park, near the scene where the body of Anika Groene was found.”

It could have been worse. He read on, considering himself lucky the article wasn’t entitled “Police Officer Suspended for Hitting on Suspect.”

“Local psychic Sidney Morrow may be aiding the homicide division with their latest investigation. Victims Candace Hegel and Anika Groene were taken within weeks of each other, under similar circumstances, and perhaps by the same assailant. Lieutenant Cruz had no comment on Morrow’s involvement with the case, and Deputy Chief Amanda Stokes has stated that the Oceanside Police Department does not consult psychics.

“Sidney Morrow has offered her assistance to the police department before. More than fifteen years ago she helped solve a missing persons case in neighboring Bonsall. A local girl, Lisa Pettigrew, was found trapped in a well on a rural piece of property. Miss Morrow disclosed the girl’s location to police officers, stating she’d seen the place in a ‘psychic vision.’

“An unidentified source at the Bonsall Fire Department indicated Pettigrew couldn’t possibly have fallen into the well without sustaining considerable bodily damage. Due to the minor nature of her injuries, it was suspected that Pettigrew and Morrow, who were in the same grade at Bonsall Middle School, had perpetrated a preteen prank.

“Deputy Chief Stokes has named no lead suspects in either of the latest killings, nor has she confirmed the brutal slayings are related…”

As he sat there, glaring at the page and condemning Sidney Morrow to an eternal damnation he no longer believed in, the clouds overhead broke open and it began to rain.

When Sidney arrived at Pacific Pet Hotel, Marc was already there. He’d called last night to ask if he could pick up a urine sample from Blue.

Ignoring her jittery pulse, she opened the gate and drove through it, parking in her usual spot beside the building. When she got out of the truck he was striding toward her.

From across the expanse between them, she could feel his anger, shimmering like a mirage on hot asphalt. It had rained for a few moments, just a teasing sprinkle, before the relentless sun returned and evaporated every drop of moisture from the baking earth.

Now the air was as muggy as shower steam.

Judging by the hard set of his jaw, another kind of storm was brewing. It was too bad he looked mouthwateringly good in a plain white T-shirt and navy-blue trousers, because she had a feeling he was going to ruin the effect when he opened his mouth.

“Here,” he grated, shoving a sterile cup at her chest.

Refusing to rise to the bait, she took the small container placidly and retrieved Blue from his kennel. True to form, the dog growled at Marc, teeth bared, hackles up.

Again, Marc didn’t seem surprised by the dog’s reaction, and Sidney wondered at the animosity between him and man’s best friend. Once bitten, twice shy?

“Will he piss on cue?” he asked.

“He’s a male, isn’t he?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Intact dogs like to mark their territory,” she explained.

“Intact?”

“Not neutered.”

She led Blue through the front gate to a tree-lined median, letting him sniff the area’s most popular target. Sure enough, he lifted his leg. She stuck the cup under him, capped it when he was finished, and thrust it at Marc, a self-satisfied smile on her face.

“Thanks,” he said tersely, his expression far from grateful.

“So what are you testing for?” she asked as he walked away. Her eyes lingered on the way his T-shirt fit across his broad shoulders, the fading scratches on the back of his neck, the still-raw patch on his elbow.

He arched a backward glance at her. “Marijuana. Do you think that’s what he was on?”

She shrugged. “Could have been, I guess.”

“Aren’t you familiar with the effects?”

“I’ve never tried it.”

“Right,” he scoffed, setting the sample on the top of his car.

“I suppose you have?”

“Many times.”

Sidney wasn’t sure she believed him. He didn’t strike her as a free-loving, experimental type, but perhaps he hadn’t always been so iron-willed. “Were you one of those wayward boys who turned his life around by joining the other side of the law?”

“No.”

She urged Blue to sit by tugging on his leash. “What were you like, as a child?”

He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I was very responsible.”

“So you went away to college and cut loose?”

“No. I went away to Saudi Arabia. And I wouldn’t call killing people cutting loose, although some of my comrades seemed to find it entertaining.”

She searched his face. “I would never have guessed that. Are you saying you were introduced to drugs in the military?”

“Yes.”

“Did it help?”

His whiskey-brown eyes met hers. “No.”

The intensity with which he spoke, and the underlying rage she sensed in him, made her uneasy. “You have to know I didn’t have a choice about the photo in the newspaper,” she said to fill the silence. “Is that why you’re angry?”

“I don’t know anything about you,” he replied, quite honestly.

Turning his back on her, he got in his car and drove away, leaving her standing there, speechless, confused and very much alone.

At LabTech, Marc found Gina hunched over her laptop. “Anything interesting?”

“Yes,” she said, taking off her reading glasses as she straightened. “Preliminary reports show consistencies between the semen samples obtained from both victims and the one from the Guajome Lake rest room, but it could take weeks for DNA confirmation. And still no hit in CODIS.” She closed the screen. “What have you got?”

He placed the container of urine on the desk. “If he tests positive, can you match the results to a specific crop or plant?”

She looked skeptical. “Maybe, if the grower used a certain kind of fertilizer, pesticide, or another traceable chemical. Your homegrown variety can also have unique qualities, such as astronomically high THC levels, but it’s a long shot, either way.”

Most investigative techniques were, he thought, taking Tony’s joint out of his pocket. “Can you run this?”

“Sure. Is it from the scene?”

“No.”

“From a suspect?”

“Not really. Not firsthand, anyway.”

She arched a dark, curvy brow. “So the paper isn’t evidence?”

“No.”

She tore open the joint to see its contents. “It’s definitely fresh, probably local. Good quality. You want me to have narcotics take a look?”

It was a good idea, but Marc didn’t want to bring the heat down on Tony, or his customers, who were mostly harmless, fresh-faced college kids. Like Anika Groene, he thought suddenly. “Not yet. See if you can match it first. I’ll take it from there.”

She smiled at his secrecy. “By the way, I’d make myself scarce, if I were you.”

He grew instantly wary. “Is Stokes around?”

“Not that I know of, but I heard she’s breathing fire.”

“She saw the paper this morning?”

“Yes, and your little psychic friend got herself a lawyer. Slapped homicide with a cease and desist order first thing this morning.”

When Marc caught up with her again, it was really raining. Huge, fat drops saturated Sidney’s clothing as she walked from the parking garage to her front doorstep.

He was waiting for her there, getting soaked, although he appeared oblivious to the downpour. His hair was thick and damp in the moisture-laden air, and his T-shirt clung intriguingly to the muscles of his chest. From his half-lidded eyes to his pseudo-casual stance, every aspect of his demeanor suggested barely restrained fury.

The amount of tension between them spiked higher than the humidity.

“What do you mean you didn’t have a choice about the photo?” he asked. “Did your lawyer advise you to go public?”

She took her keys out of her front pocket with a trembling hand, feeling the rain permeate her tank top. “What lawyer? Greg?”

“Your brother-in-law is your lawyer?” he asked, eyeing her with derision. “That is dysfunctional on so many levels.”

“Would you move? I’d like to get out of the rain.”

He didn’t budge.

“Did you read the article?” she asked, exasperated.

“Of course.”

She stared at him, for that explained it all. He didn’t appear convinced. Wiping the rain from her face, she said, “The picture they printed was taken before…”

“We almost had sex on a picnic table?” he finished for her.

Hot color suffused her face. “I wouldn’t have…”

“Oh, yes, you would have,” he countered smugly. “And so would I, if we’d been alone.”

She opened her mouth to deny it, and found the lie impossible to utter. “Crystal said she would destroy your career,” she murmured, returning to the subject of most importance.

His expression changed. “That’s why you consented? Because of me?”

“Yes. Now can I please get by?”

He moved aside a half step, giving her access to the front door, but only if she wanted to plaster her body against his. Refusing to let him intimidate her, she put her shoulder in the middle of his chest and grinded her elbow into his hard, flat abdomen as she turned the key.

He seemed to take a perverse pleasure in her attempt to harm him. To her chagrin, she couldn’t deny her own enjoyment in his proximity.

Why did he have to smell so good? Like freshly laundered cotton and rain, testosterone and Old Spice. At the base of his throat, his skin was dark and damp against the collar of his T-shirt. She closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the urge to put her mouth there and taste him, too.

“You should have asked me,” he said. “The
Explorer
isn’t a tabloid press. They would never have printed anything explicit.”

She moistened her lips, still staring at his neck. “She lied?”

“Yes.”

The door opened in, but she didn’t push it. Her eyes drifted up to his face. “Greg contacted your office?”

He was fixated on her mouth. “Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“That you would sue for harassment if we continued surveillance.”

She put her head against the door, more weary than astonished by her brother-in-law’s underhanded machinations.

“He lied?”

“Yes,” she said, casting him a sideways glance. Her eyelids felt very heavy, and she wanted nothing more than to lean in to him, to taste his mouth again, to flatten her breasts against his chest and feel how his body responded to hers.

Then the hurtful words he’d said to her this morning came rushing back, and she squeezed the doorknob tightly, willing her hand to make it turn.

He didn’t know her. He didn’t want to know her.

Marc wanted her the same way Greg wanted her-in a base, purely sexual way. The only difference was that she wanted him back.

If he really knew her, he’d run the other way, she reminded herself. No one wanted a freak for a girlfriend. What man would feel comfortable around a woman capable of invading his mind, guessing his secrets, stealing his thoughts?

“Come on in,” she said, pushing open the door. “I’ll get you a towel.” Going in ahead of him, she grabbed a towel off the rack in the bathroom. She avoided glancing into the mirror, afraid of the raw need she would see reflected there.

Marc stood in the doorway, his broad shoulders filling the frame. He seemed unsure if he wanted to commit himself further by stepping into the room, and his reluctance to impose upon her was twice as appealing as his tough guy façade.

“Here,” she said, shoving the towel at him.

He hesitated, his eyes on the way her wet tank top molded to her chest. “I think you need it more than I do,” he said gruffly.

She didn’t have to glance down to know the circles of her nipples were revealed by the damp fabric. She could read it in his hot gaze. Clenching her hands into fists, she whirled away from him, storming up the staircase to change her shirt.

Outside the door to her bedroom, she stopped dead in her tracks.

Someone had been in her house. Someone had…“Oh God,” she said, clapping a hand over her mouth. “Marley.”